Thirty years ago almost to the day, June 8, 1984, the Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Lakers in what became known as “the heat game.” It was reportedly 97 degrees in the old Boston Garden— a building that didn’t have air conditioning in it (why would you need that in an arena also used for hockey?). Boston was suffering through a heat wave and that made the building sweltering, more so that what the Heat and Spurs faced Thursday night.

The enduring image of 2014’s Game 1 is LeBron James being carried off the court with cramps. The enduring image out of 1984 comes at the 3:44 mark of the video above: a 37-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with the oxygen mask over his face, sucking in air as he tries to get rested and back on the court.

“I suggest,” Abdul-Jabbar said after the game (via NBA.com), “that you go to a local steam bath, do 100 pushups with all your clothes on, then try to run back and forth for 48 minutes. The game was in slow motion. It was like we were running in mud.”

The 1984 NBA Finals was the one everyone had been waiting for, finally Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were going to square off on the NBA’s biggest stage (it was David Stern’s first Finals as commissioner, he certainly lucked into a lot of things early in his tenure). The series didn’t disappoint, going seven games (with Bird and the Celtics ultimately prevailing, the first salvo in the great rivalry of the 1980s).

Bird owned Game 5 — 34 points on 15-of-20 shooting, plus grabbing 17 boards. And like the Spurs after Game 1 this year (with Tony Parker saying it felt like a European gym and Tim Duncan saying it was like the Virgin Islands where he grew up) Bird said after the game he was used to this.

“I play in this stuff all the time back home. It’s like this all summer.”

(As a side note pointed out by my boss Rick Cordella, maybe the most classic part of the above video is near the end, at the 6:15 mark, when a guy just lights up a cigarette in the building as the fans celebrate, Mad Men style. That was just a different era.)

Stuff happens in an NBA Finals. Unexpected stuff. What matters is who adapts, who adjusts, who just finds a way to play through that and win.

When the Heat win, this site is filled with Heat fans.
When the heat lose, this site is filled with Heat haters.

When I say haters I don’t mean regular NBA fans, but people who would diss Lebron/Wade/The entire Heat organization even if they saved a bus full of children and gave them all a billion dollars in a recession while curing cancer on a Monday.

Hate to sound like an old bastard, but the NBA was so much tougher back then. You had the Lakers with Magic, Kareem and Worthy, arguably 2 of which could be considered in the Top 5 players in NBA history. The Celtics with Bird, McHale and Parish, with Bird being in the Top 5 of all time and the others being in the Top 50. You had the Sixers with Dr. J, eventually Moses, both in the Top 15 of all time, with great role players like Cheeks, the Jones’, Darryl (early on) etc. Also the Bucks, who unfortunately for them are often overlooked cuz they could never get by Bos/Phi. They were loaded with Lanier, Moncrief, Bridgeman, Marques Johnson, and eventually Terry Cummings and averaged over 55 wins a year. They would have been a regular NBA Finalist in today’s era. God I’m getting old.

Dirk is a upgraded version of Jack Sikma, with a little better range. Never will he enter the rarified air of Larry Joe Bird. You have my permission to commence slapping next time you see that clown, LOL.

drewzducks - Jun 7, 2014 at 4:48 PM

Also, noticing the NY in your name, I’m gonna assume you may have seen the unstoppable force known as Bernard King. He was a one man wrecking crew. They don’t make players like that anymore.